14.1.16

"GUTMENSCH" JOINS "PROBLEMATIC."

"Gutmensch" was selected because, in connection with the current refugee crisis in Germany, it defames "tolerance and helpfulness as naïve, dumb and worldly innocent, as having a helper syndrome or as moral imperialism," the jury president, linguist Nina Janich, told the press.

It's an interesting choice. "Mensch" can connote either a person, or, as is the case in American Yiddish, a particularly empathetic or otherwise decent person. Thus "Gutmensch" intensifies an intensifier, but the connotation is "overly politically correct." That's different, dear reader, from my "Excessively Earnest" locution.

Among the runners-up, "verschwulung." Nature gets an assist from nurture.